How Josh Dunlop Built the #1 Photography Site in the World And Makes 7 Figures A year

Josh Dunlop’s Story…

This testimonial requires some audience participation.

So sit back, close your eyes, and imagine what it would feel like to have the #1 site in your niche.

No, really, trust me on this.

Imagine outranking your biggest competitors, leaving them gagging on your digital dust.

Visualize what your Google Analytics dashboard would look like.

How it would feel to have a 6-figure income.

Every. Single. Month.

To know that you’ve finally leveled up to the ultimate goal of financial freedom.

And…3-2-1, you’re back in the room.

Now you know roughly what it feels like to be Joshua Dunlop of ExpertPhotography.com.

Joshua is a member of Authority Hacker, something he partially credits with the rise of his site from being just another competitor to being the #1 site in his industry.

And the 7-figure income that comes with that.

How it all started

Way back in April 2011, Joshua decided to set up a website for his brand new photography business.

His original plan was to write some blog posts, get eyes on the page, and bring in new clients.

But after looking around at his competition he noticed that most of their content was rubbish.

In his own words, “…nobody was taking it seriously.“

Deep down he knew he could provide a better information resource for photographers.

So he set himself the task of creating three blog posts a week, every week.

He kept to this schedule for several years until he found what worked for him.

Which in turn led to a profitable site and a subscriber list of around 15,000 people.

But he faced the same struggles as pretty much any new webpreneur – where to best focus his time and energy.

There were simply too many shiny objects vying for his attention, so his focus was scattered.

One example of this was releasing a $97 infoproduct to his entire list.

It sold exactly one copy..

There were lots of reasons why that happened, but Johsua knew something needed to change.

As time passed he did get better at selling his products but his sales volume was still relatively low compared to what he had hoped for.

Figuring out what works

So in early 2016 he bit the bullet and signed up for the Authority Hacker Training.

What immediately became apparent is that he had no idea how much his content was actually worth.

Or how much it could be worth if he scaled things up.

After an abortive first attempt at creating content at scale, Josh hired an SEO, a content manager, and a full-time writer.

“Everything snowballed from there. We started spending around $12,000 per month on content. That is a lot of money, but when I look at the content our in-house writer has produced, it accounts for 40% of our current traffic.”

And just to put some numbers around this, Expert Photography gets around 1.4 million unique visitors per month.

Which means their updated content marketing strategy results in around 600,000 organic visitors every 30 days.

Their organic traffic is up almost 6x on the previous year, as you can see from the above screenshot.

Expert Photography really only started to scale their content marketing efforts just over 20 months ago.

And that single decision – based on what Joshua learned in Authority Hacker’s training – took the site from 15th place to 1st place in their industry.

They’re now twice as large as even their biggest competitor.

Rolling With The Punches

Another big lesson for Josh was that although content marketing might not have immediate returns, it always paid off in the long term and he now had enough experience to realize that which is why he decided to double down.

In his case, after looking back at his first growth surge, he understood that every $1 spent on content easily yielded $10 of revenue down the line.

His decision to invest in content marketing over the long-term was pivotal to the success of his site.

Some of you might find this odd, but he also doesn’t pay too much attention to algorithm updates, simply because his business has experienced several of them.

And with each algorithm update, he watched his competitors drop down while his site kept gaining more traction.

He knows that long-term success can take a long time to achieve.

But also that the long-term gains are huge when you do it well enough.

Huge as in 400 – 500 new subscribers every day.

Each of which has a lot of potential value to his business in terms of buying their different products.

Again, something that we talk about in our Authority Hacker training .

“It was only when I really started to understand tripwires, funnels and Facebook ads that I started to see a big impact.“

What Josh got out of the Authority Hacker Community

Josh also feels that the Authority Hacker community contributed to the overall success he’s achieved.

His experience is something we see a lot with Authority Hacker members.

That one golden nugget or tip they pick up from the community can be just as valuable as the course itself.

“The Authority Hacker community is pretty cool actually because even though I’m not the most active member, there’s always lighthearted discussions about the right or wrong way to do things.”

“But what appeals to me most is that everyone is knowledgeable, and you can get the exact advice you need when you need it. Without anyone being mean or spiteful.”

At one stage this even extended to being notified by an Authority Hacker member that a site in his niche was for sale.

And even though Josh didn’t have the bandwidth to acquire the site, another community member discussed buying it and then doing cross-promotion work with him.

How cool is that?

A Hands-off Business

Right now, Joshua only spends about an hour a week on his content.

In fact, he’s gone an entire month without having to talk to his content team – he helps with them with strategy and ideas in the early stages.

But apart from that, he just leaves them to it.

There are very few business models where you can come back after a month and not find the entire place in chaos.

This now means he has a lot more free time to focus on strategy rather than just day-to-day tactics.

And that’s exactly where profitable site owners should aim to be – working on their business, and not in their business.

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